MEMO Duo (Elisa Moles, flute, and Molly O’Roark, harp) will premiere Cosmic Changes at the 51st Annual National Flute Association Convention as part of their multimedia project RELIVE.

Cosmic Changes was commissioned by MEMO Duo (Elisa Miles, flute and Molly 0’Roark, harp). The music was composed to represent and reflect on the Five Element Theory (Wuxing) of feng shui where the Five Phases of Energy (Fire, Water, Wood, Earth, and Metal) and the magic squares of their associated planets (Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus) are combined to construct the music. The five energies and their associated music are ordered and reordered to create the energy changes of the Generating (Sheng) Cycle, the Controlling (KE) Cycle, the Insulting (Wu) Cycle, plus two rock-inspired cycles that frame the piece. Feng shui is also applied to the birth dates of Elisa and Molly to produce music that appears within the Earth and Metal sections. Variations of the Chinese folk song Gao Shan Liu Shui (High Mountain, Flowing Water) and music produced by Fibonacci numbers punctuate the cycles as vital reminders of our cosmic connections to nature.